


lighthouse.

by orphan_account



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 17:54:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17585549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Tumblr prompt: Ellie is injured and Nick is there for her through her recovery."How did you do that?""It's just how my brain works."Until, something happens- and it isn't anymore.





	lighthouse.

"The most important thing to remember is that she's a fighter, okay. Don't forget that.", McGee reminded Nick, his hands gripped tight to the other man's shoulders to stop him from pacing away down the hospital's hallway.

It had only been a few hours since the call had come in to him from the trauma ward in Bethesda. Did he know an Eleanor Bishop? Of course. Was this her birthday? Yes, he had answered the woman on the phone. And could he come down to the emergency room? Another driver’s brakes had failed and he and gone straight through a stop sign and hit her car on the driver's side. The injuries weren't life threatening. Did she have insurance, by the way?

Nick had raced to the hospital in utter panic, and had words with security, flashing his gun recklessly in full view of half of the emergency room before Gibbs had shown up with Jack, McGee and Jimmy driving in with Kasie behind them.

Of course, Gibbs knew something had happened.

His famous gut had led him to flick through the police scanner, where the flare had gone out for an accident involving Ellie's license plate. It wasn't hard to find the closest hospital, and unlike Nick, who had come in with his heart pounding and his stomach clenched, expecting the worst news, Gibbs and Jack had brought their badges and had all of Ellie's information neatly organized to tell the nurses.

Nick still wanted to scream, and race away from McGee, who had clearly been tasked with handling him while Gibbs and Jack spoke with a severe looking man in a white coat, who was tapping through Ellie's chart on his tablet. They were nodding along with him, and Nick wondered how much they understood. Jack was a real doctor, right?

"Torres.", Gibbs called for him, motioning for him to come over.

"Yeah. Yeah.", he muttered, running a hand through his hair to try to calm the jittery feeling that had taken over his entire body.

"Room's 20B, that's on the third floor. You can go ahead and see her."

-

Nick ran up the flights of stairs, not caring for how many nurses and orderlies her nearly tackled into the walls of the narrow, sickly yellow hallways. Jack had told him, more seriously, her voice soft and slowed, that Ellie had a hard night ahead of her. They couldn't give her stronger pain meds until they were sure her concussion wouldn't worsen overnight, and she'd already vomited up most of what had probably been her dinner, which would put the snacks that Ellie would surely be asking for when she saw him off the table.

She had a broken collarbone and wrist, and Gibbs pointed out that had the other car not been going far under the speed limit anyway, they could have been looking at much worse.

"It's the best case scenario. After a couple of months, she's going to be fine. She didn't even need stitches.", Jack told him, her expression still so earnest Nick could feel his heart wrench in his chest.

"Don't care. I need to see her.", he said, words coming too fast from his mouth to catch up with his breath, as he left the team behind.

-

Ellie looked up at him with her eyes slightly dazed, propped up on pillows in her hospital bed. She looked impossibly small, even as she grinned up at Nick, sipping happily from her juicebox.

"They finally gave me-", she paused to look at the box, before turning back to Nick. "-Hawaiian Punch. I hate to say, it's pretty good."

"Ellie. Jesus- how- how are you? What-", Nick groaned, shaking his head as his eyes took in the state of her; the bruises and the crusted blood below her split lip; the bright, white bandages around her arm and the stark color of the sling against it.

"Are you holding up okay?", he finally asked, searching her hazel eyes for a sign that something was wrong. Or, at least- more wrong.

"I'm trying not to think about it. Trying really hard.", she said, her voice weary and hoarse.

"Ellie."

She shut her eyes, as if blinking back tears threatening to break through her façade. "I- guess we're not going to be on for that 5K next week."

"We could always do one in the summer.", he told her, moving to sit on the edge of her bed. "Or winter- I hear that Nordic Trek in the Adirondacks is a real challenge."

"Sounds like a plan.", she said, trying not to wince.

He reached for her good hand, holding it in his, oblivious to whether or not this was just what partners did. She squeezed back, her grip tight against his fingers.

"I guess I have a lot to catch up on because I've been skipping leg day, like a lot.", he quipped. The pad of his thumb rubbed circles around the back of her hand, and he could feel her slowly begin to relax, even just slightly, under his touch.

"Nick?"

"Yeah, what's up?"

"Can you stay with me tonight?"

He nodded. "Sure, I'll ask the nurse to bring a bed in next time she comes around. You gotta share your juice, though. And give Gibbs those puppy eyes when he comes up to punch me for you know, fraternizing with the enemy."

"Stay here.", she tapped on the empty space beside her in the bed, her eyes watering slightly. He had expected to hear her laugh, before his brain had reminded him of where the were.  
"I don't care what anyone thinks. I just need something else to focus on."

Please, Nick."

"Hey, hey, hey. You're okay. You're going to be okay, Ell.", he murmured, pushing himself up on her bed so that they were almost touching, his jeans brushing coarsely against her hospital gown. He held her hand in his lap, tracing the veins lightly underneath her pale skin with his thumbs, listening to her breathing begin to even beside him.

"I really wish they had TV in here.", she said, trying to hide the tiredness in her voice.

Ellie wasn't allowed to sleep until she passed the 24 hour mark; and her head was throbbing with a constant, sharp pain. She was supposed to be resting, which was becoming closer and closer to impossible under the hot fluorescent bars of her room, and the noise coming from the street below. There were an awful lot of police cars and people screaming for seven on a Monday night.

"Am I not entertaining enough?", Nick joked.

"You're not Jimmy."

"Which Jimmy?"

"I don't know. All of them. Trevor and Stephen, too. I'm missing a real party.", she chuckled, letting her eyes flutter shut for just a moment.

One of Nick's hands stayed lightly enveloped around hers, but the fingers on his other lightly threaded through her hair, just below her shoulder. She could feel him trying to detangle the blood and dirt from her locks, taking care to pull as gently as he could.

"Oh, you don't know. I've kept a lot of women up all night, Bishop."

Ellie simply squeezed his hand back, resisting the urge to shake her head and smack him. She could always count on Nick to be Nick; no matter what happened.

-

Several weeks later; Ellie was back at her desk, trying to keep herself from vomiting right into her trash can. The room was far too bright, the lights buzzing above her, and the rising and falling white noise of the bullpen filling her head with a painful pounding. She squeezed her eyes shut, turning her head back down towards the stack of reports on her desk.

Gibbs had put her on desk duty, not sparing much more of a comment in her direction than a curt Welcome Back, which she was eternally grateful for. 

Leave it to Gibbs to not make a big deal, though Nick and McGee spent much of her first days back hovering over her, always ready with snacks, water bottles, and light touches against her shoulder or her hand.

Ellie would have liked to bask in their attention, especially Nick's; if she hadn't been so completely exhausted all the time. She'd been carpooling with him, and would until her cast came off; but she found herself half-asleep through their drives, barely able to keep herself awake enough to throw something in the microwave when Nick dropped her off and very reluctantly left her on her own.

She wasn't stupid, but she'd been keeping her doctor's appointments and scared herself enough with looking up her symptoms on the internet that she promised herself if anything worse were to happen, she would call a cab to the ER herself.

Besides, it was getting better.

On her first day back, she had spent most of her morning going back and forth to the bathroom throwing up her breakfast in intervals, the sunlight streaming through the windows of the NCIS building refusing to leave her stomach in peace. Everything had been too bright and too loud, and Ellie had spent an ungodly long time trying to remember her Agent ID number to log in to her computer.

Today, Ellie was still trying not to vomit, though she'd logged in with no issues and gotten to work on the reports.

Her typing speed was way off, making her even more irritable. Even one handed, she wasn't usually this bad. She gritted her teeth, trying to force herself to speed through the form. It had been three weeks since she had been discharged from the hospital, for God's sake. All of her scans had come up clean, and she had even been cleared for limited field duty until she could take the test to get her gun back. 

She was eating healthier than usual, too and so, the only reason she could reasonably come up with for being so off her game at crunching data, which was her specialty, was that she just wasn't trying hard enough.

Sighing, Ellie clicked through the spell-check, which she hadn't done since middle school at least. How had she managed to misspell "road"? Maybe because the E was so close to the O on her keyboard?

"Grab your gear!", Gibbs called from the catwalk above them, sending a rattling feeling through Ellie's neck. "You too, Bishop! Got a Marine who might be letting a fugitive sleep over. You and Torres run secondary surveillance from the van. McGee, with me."

A thrill surged through her as she pulled her backpack out from under her desk, matching Nick's stride even as the room bobbed and dipped around her.

"Ready, Bishop?", Nick asked, carefully brushing by her arm as they boarded the elevator.

"You don't even know how much."

-

Ellie shielded her eyes from the sun as she squinted to get a better look inside the brownstone where two men were having dinner. 

If it was their guy, he had definitely changed his appearance, having shaved his head and bleached his eyebrows from the wanted poster of him that was on their dashboard. 

It felt good to be back in her windbreaker and ball cap, even if she still felt far too warm and sick, like a cold she just couldn’t shake. 

The lukewarm sofa Nick had been nice enough to grab her from the vending machine was helping, but not much, and she knew she needed her concentration at its peak. When had it gotten so hard to just people watch? 

“Hey- Bishop?” 

“Uh-“, her partner shook her out of her thoughts, forcing her to meet his eyes over the van’s central console. “Do you see movement?” 

“Are you doing good? With everything?”, he asked, his voice so soft she could feel her heart crack a bit. 

“Yeah. This is getting kind of itchy, though.”, she said, motioning towards her cast. Nick had drawn a silly little heart on the underside of her wrist with his name in it, which made her smile every time she glanced down at it. 

“Does it hurt much?” 

“Not anymore. But I start PT soon, and you will be my first call to complain.”, she giggled, ignoring Nick’s outline beginning to blur around his jacket. He was fuzzy, but she could still see him smiling. 

“You’re okay, though, right?” 

“Yeah. It was an accident, and I think that helps a lot, that it’s no one’s fault.”

“Yeah, guess it does. You’d tell me if something was wrong, right, Ellie?” 

She bit down on the inside of her cheek. 

“Mmhmm. But really, it’s okay. My CT scans were all good. All good under the hood.”, she cracked a little joke, more for herself, she realized, than Nick, who was growing more blurry by the second under the hot, midday sun. She shut her eyes for just a second, just to bring him back into proper focus. 

“Bishop? Hey, B?”

Ellie hadn’t replied to his three last quips, which were totally the kind of zingers she usually went for, nor had she been the first to point out that the two guys were moving out of their view. It had been five minutes since she had said anything, which was way past her usual time of giving him the cold shoulder for his less than great jokes. 

“Ellie?”

Nick shook her shoulder, causing her hair to spill down her back. Her eyes were shut, like she was sleeping, her breathing even and deep. He snapped his fingers in front of her face, and gave her thigh a strong pinch. 

Nothing. 

Panicked, he reached for his phone in his pocket, scrolling through his contacts to find Gibbs. 

“Gibbs!”, he shouted into the speaker, still getting no response from his partner. 

“Torres, what happened?” 

“I think we got a big problem.” 

-

Post Concussion Syndrome. 

Apparently, the doctors had a name for it. Doctors had names for everything, Nick thought to himself, as Ducky tried to explain to him what was going on with his partner. 

The hallway outside her hospital room looked as though a hurricane had ripped through it- Nick had kicked over a recycling bin and thrown a chair after it after Ducky had begun to speak. The older man simply stepped out of his way, and kept rambling on in his measured British accent. 

“- It’s very likely that she would have noticed the symptoms worsen herself, of course, the headaches and a bit of memory loss are considered, dare I say, normal under the circumstances, but the rest of it wouldn’t have been. Photosensitivity, sensitivity to sound, fatigue, blurry vision, difficulty concentrating and parsing through data-”

“Oh, hell no.”, Nick groaned, kicking his boots against the radiator in the hallway. “Parsing through data is like, Bishop’s superpower.” 

“Nicholas. I understand that all of this is difficult to take in-” 

“Difficult? What the hell, Duck? She could have died in the van and she would have- she lied to me. She lied to all of us and I’m supposed to be okay with that? How the hell could she have been so stupid-”   
Nick threw himself into one of the chairs still standing beside the window, which overlooked the street below on an early evening. The sunset was bright, pink and red, making his eyes burn as he tried to calm his breathing.

“This is not- It’s not okay.” 

Ducky sighed, as though the weight of the whole world was whistling out between his lips, before he took a seat himself beside the younger agent. He remembered, days long ago when Jethro had been the one filled with such a sharp, dangerous rage. 

“This job, and all of you, mean a great deal to Eleanor, I’m afraid. Sometimes the best of us can make lapses in judgement when the stakes seem to be so high. A case of not seeing the forest for the trees, I suppose one could say.”, he told Nick. He nodded, seeming to for the first time; accept it all. 

“So what- what are we going to do? What happens after this?” 

“Nicholas- I’m afraid it’s not that simple. Eleanor is suffering from a brain injury, and those are quite a puzzle on their own. She has a good chance of recovering, but that takes time, and our Eleanor is perhaps not the best at taking her time. But there’s also the possibility that she may have to experience some iteration of these symptoms for the rest of her time on this earth.” 

Nick simply buried his face in hands and groaned, stamping against the cold tile floor of of the hospital. 

“Then- what do I do?” 

“Try to be with her. Sometimes that is the best we can do.”

-

To say that Ellie had gone stir-crazy in her eight weeks of mandated leave was an understatement. 

To say that she was taking it well, though- was wholly wrong, and Nick could see the ample evidence of that fact as he walked into her apartment, his backpack still slung over his shoulder after he and the team had just closed a case. 

He had spent most of that time with her, trying his best to fill the gaps in her day, and more often than not, spending the night in her bedroom. At first; it had simply been because he was terrified to lose her, but perhaps because she had to depend on him, as twisted and wrong as that was, he woke up regularly with her arms wrapped around his chest now. 

In the mornings, she would wake up smiling, ceaselessly optimistic that this day would be better than the last, excited to make them coffee and try to get in a chapter of her latest book before he had to leave for the office. But then, her mood that would only deteriorate when she would realize that she faced another day stuck inside her shrinking world- no cases, no information flow that kept her blood pumping steadily in her ears, most of the things that she had taken for granted in the past slipping through her fingers like water. 

Things were better, if only slightly- Ellie hadn’t had another blackout since the incident in the van, the sunlight coming in from her windows no longer made her ill, and the constant, pulsing headache she’d buried in front of the team was gone. 

Still, her concentration was shot, and she found that even the smallest things made her tired beyond comprehension. There were no more nights spend speeding through papers on her laptop, soaking in the vast web of connection between every data point, no more plans for running 5k’s with her partner, no more spending a lazy afternoon with her sketchbook or a paintbrush.

It was all far too hard to get the energy up to do, and apparently, thinking hard enough to finish a simple sketch made the world blur at its corners. Even if she hadn’t been unnaturally bright- it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that when her medical leave ran out, she would be useless to the team. 

That was fine. Ellie had already written out a decent resignation letter ready to be handed in to Gibbs when she got called in for her first day back. 

The apartment looked like a crime scene- papers and paintings ripped from the walls, the thin wood of her bookcase snapped between shelves as if she had kicked it, and her phone smashed against the window, screen cracked into hundreds of slivers of glass. Still, she was sitting cross legged on the couch, sipping on a bottle of wine straight from the bottle, dressed as well as ever in her pyjamas and a housecoat. 

“You’re not supposed to be drinking.”, he said, laying down his things by her feet and pulling the bottle from her hand. “But I’m not going to deny, I like this whole modern art kick that you’re on.”

She had stuck her middle finger squarely in his gaze; and Nick had to smile at that. No matter what, Ellie was so utterly perfect- her defiant pout in his direction just so cute he couldn’t even be angry at how much he was going to have clean up later. Ducky had told him that the irritability and lack of impulse control was par for the course, and Nick was trying to take it all in stride. 

He would spend his whole life cleaning up after her if it meant that he got to have her in the whole rest of his life. 

“Do you...do you know what happened to the guy who hit me?”, she finally asked, after he had settled in beside her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pressing her cheek to his chest. 

“The other driver in the accident? No, but I’m sure we could find out. Would probably only take McGee a couple of minutes.”, he said, immediately regretting it when she shot back a bitter retort. 

“It used to just take me a couple of minutes, remember?” 

“Ell- that’s not what I meant.” 

“I know. I- I called the insurance company and did some digging. I guess I really can’t stay away from a good mystery, and no one says no to the NSA. He needed a hip replacement and has a few screws in his leg now.” 

“Sounds brutal.” 

She started to laugh in spite of herself. “He’s an engineer who works on airplanes. He’s been back on the job for months. Even went on an all expenses paid trip to Panama with the crew last week. It’s like nothing ever happened. Except that he needed a new car. It must just be the worst.” 

Nick shook his head, drawing her closer into himself so he could smell the sweet coconut shampoo he’d started picking up for her. “That’s not fair.” 

“Life’s not fair, I guess.”, she scoffed. “Maybe all those special interrogations I did caught up to me and I deserved to have my life ruined.” 

“Don’t say stuff like that.” 

“Maybe it’s true. Anyway- I think I’m becoming a minimalist. I stayed awake long enough to finish that series on Netflix. I even managed to really get a decent amount of it. And so, I decided I don’t need any of this stuff.”, she said, her voice feigning excitement as she motioned towards the scene of destruction in her apartment.

“Ellie, please.” 

A long, awkward silence passed between them, as if both of them were drained beyond measure and had nothing else left to say.

“I think I’m just going to take a bath, okay?”, she said, untangling herself from his grip. “I can take the smell of bubble baths again without wanting to throw up. That’s got to count for something.” 

“Yeah. Every little victory counts, okay?”

“Keep telling yourself that.”, she said, heading off towards the bathroom. Nick watched her go, waiting until he heard the sound of the faucets turn on to start cleaning up. 

After he had managed to get most of the glass and paper neatly swept into the trash, he paused to dial Gibbs before he began to stack all the books that had fallen from their shelves on her table. 

“What is it, Torres?”, he heard their boss pick up on the other end. 

“There has to be something we can do.”, he said, his voice missing its usual jovial pretense. Gibbs didn’t need to ask what about he meant. 

“We’re not miracle workers, Torres. Got anything else you gotta say?”

Nick gritted his teeth, trying his best to hide his frustration. “I do, actually. Never leave a man behind. That’s not one of your rules. That’s one of the rules. The big ones. And if we don’t do everything we can, we’d be leaving a man behind.” 

“Who says we’re not?”, Gibbs snapped back. “Goodnight, Nick.” 

-

Two weeks later, Ellie was halfway through cleaning out the drawers of her desk when she felt Gibbs’ unmistakable presence behind her. She and Nick had come in early, since she’d wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having to walk through the bullpen with everyone’s eyes on her, whispering about what a waste all of it was. 

Nick was helping, filing away her things so that she didn’t have to waste her already limited store of energy on needing to crawl under her desk over and over to loosen some old papers, or a knick-knack thrown behind the bars that held it all together. 

“Gibbs.”, she greeted him, turning around so she could face him. “I just- wanted to say thank you again, for everything over the past few years. I’ll try to visit-” 

“Save it, Bishop.”

“W-what?”   
“I said, save it.”, their boss said again, picking up the stack of boxes that neither of them had noticed were at his feet and lifting the column of cardboard atop Ellie’s desk. 

“I understand you’re not really a fan of this anymore.”, he said, cocking his head towards her untouched keyboard and computer. With a sweep of his arm, he emptied them into one of the boxes,the cables making a dull thwacking sound against the carpet as he ripped them from the extension cord with the action. 

“Fine by me, can’t say I ever made the transition into the digital age.” 

“Uh-” 

“Boss, what are you doing?”, Nick spoke up, scooting out from under Ellie’s desk. 

“Not now, Torres. See this?”, In his other hand, Gibbs held a tape recorder. Ellie nodded dumbly, still speechless at whatever it was that was happening here. 

“Red button, record. This one with the square, hit that to stop the tape if you need to take a break. Rewind- works like it does on your VCR.” 

“I- I don’t have a VCR.”, Ellie sputtered, her eyes wide. 

“Means that you can go over the tape if you make a mistake or need a recap. These-”, Gibbs continued, motioning towards the remaining boxes on her desk. “-are all the reports that you have to finish up from the past few months. Start with the case number and the date, just like you do on the computer. When you’re done with the details, sign off as Special Agent Eleanor Bishop. That sound hard?”

“I-um- I qui- I resigned. My badge and gun are on your desk.”

“Am I hearing you say you don’t mind some of these sons of bitches getting off on technicalities because they don’t have case reports, Agent Bishop?” 

“No, sir- I just-”

“You just have a lot of work ahead of you, that sound about right?”

“I- guess? I mean, Yes, sir.” 

“Good. You’re out of here by noon, understand? After that, you will meet me at the range with your gun. We’re going to work on that.”

Ellie simply nodded, her mouth still agape. Gibbs leaned in a bit closer to her, his face almost resting on her shoulder so that Nick couldn’t hear what he was saying.

“You told me your first week as an agent that you didn’t want me going easy on you. You’re not a quitter, Agent Bishop. Welcome back.”

With that, he turned on his heel and headed in the direction of the elevator. 

Ellie whipped her gaze back to Nick, who fixed her with a puzzled look. 

“What the heck was that?”, he asked, toying with a stack of folders he had lifted out of her drawer. Her eyes seemed unusually bright, sparkling with something he hadn’t seen in months. 

“I think- I think it means we have to put my stuff back.”

“What- for real?” 

“Yeah. For real.”, she giggled, her face splitting into a genuine, toothy smile. “C’mere.” 

She pulled him up to his feet and let herself fall into his arms, giddy and gleeful and happily terrified at what was to come, if that was a feeling that one could feel. 

“Welcome Back, B.” 

“I guess so.”, she said, pausing, before letting herself squeal happily against his chest. “Yes!” 

-

Jack tracked her down not long after, taking a break with a bottle of water outside the shooting range. Ellie was just the right amount of tired, sprawled on the bench outside the door her fingers still buzzing with the feeling of shooting through targets with Gibbs behind her, whispering tips into her ear. He’d let her wordlessly go after noticing she was starting to fade, after making her promise that she would be back at the same time tomorrow. 

“I heard he’s really putting you through the ringer.”, she said, sinking down beside the younger agent. 

“Is it bad that it feels really good?”, Ellie asked, a blissful look crossing her face. 

“Now those are words I could get tattooed.”, Jack told her with a laugh. 

“Oooh, are we still getting matching ones?” 

“Hm, I’ll see if my guy has some time...Actually, I wanted to borrow you for something else.”

The two of them made their way up the hallway, headed for Jack’s office. “I need someone to help me with a sketch.” 

“Uh- I don’t know...how much you know about what happened but- you know what, I really don’t do that anymore.”, Ellie muttered, wiping her hands against her jeans. 

It still sucked to be reminded that as much as the team was making the effort, life wouldn’t magically be the same just because people were nice to her. 

Jack unlocked her office door, motioning for Ellie to take a seat across from her. 

“It’s not that kind of sketch. I meant, a profile.”

“I don’t think I’ll be that helpful. Sorry, Jack.”

“You used to work the middle east desk at the NSA.”

“I used to do a lot of things.”

“I need someone to vet my profiles on these three.”, she told Ellie, spreading out the folders on her desk. “As you can see, all of the information is in Pashto, which I admittedly- don’t know from Adam.”

“Mine really isn’t so hot anymore, either.”, Ellie sighed. This whole conversation was awkward beyond imagining, and suddenly she wished she had Nick there, or Gibbs, whose stoic silence she would have appreciated over Jack’s pushing. 

“You won’t even open the folder?”

“Uh-”, Ellie shrugged, flicking one of them open on Jack’s desk. The very ends of each line were streaked through with different colors of highlighter.

“That’s not even the best part.”

Jack slid a package of gummy bears across the table. “It’s always easier to take information in bite-sized pieces. Take a pink one, and tell me what it says.” 

Ellie blinked, glancing down at the swirling script. “It says that Mahmoud Al-Mirmar, was tied to a shipment of arms that crossed the border into Syria last month.” 

The next line was marked with a yellow highlighter, and Ellie took a lemon gummy bear from the pack. 

“The shipment should have come in on a container which was intercepted and found to contain- human remains.”

She took the blue gummy bear from the package.”The container was...refrigerated…”

Jack shook out three more gummy bears in the same order, and handed them back to Ellie. 

“He’s not an arms dealer. It’s organ trafficking. He must have rich clients who really need the goods because-”, she paused, chewing on the candy in her mouth, and letting the taste of the three of them blend in her mouth. “They’re overlooking the whole funding terrorists thing because of that. There must be someone- a patient we can find state-side, someone tied to cargo or border security- they’re letting the arms get through here.” 

Ellie’s eyes sparkled with the thrill of putting together her puzzle. She hadn’t done that in what must have been months. 

“So, you’ll help me then?” 

She nodded, grinning, slowly as Jack’s plan dawned on her. 

“I think so. The free food is a big draw.” 

-

Several months later;

Nick had been refreshing the same page on his computer for what felt like it must have been hours. 

“Ten minutes isn’t gonna make a huge difference.”, McGee called from across the bullpen. 

“Come back when your wife is writing the profiler exam, McGee. C’mon- C’mon-”, he murmured, clicking the button at the top of the page again. “I don’t get it- Bishop’s a B, that’s near the top, but she’s not on the first page-” 

“Because she didn’t write it as Bishop, Torres.”, Gibbs told him, making Nick do a double take. 

“Wait, seriously?” 

Gibbs sighed, and moved over to Nick’s desk to click through a few pages of newly qualified profilers. 

“There she is. Eleanor Torres.” 

Nick blew out the air between his lips. “She passed it!” 

“You actually thought Ellie could fail a test?”, McGee joked, sliding out his chair so he could join the rest of the teams’ impromptu celebration. 

He knew Ellie had had a rough couple of years since the accident, but he’d watched her thrive under Gibbs and Jack careful management. He hadn’t been as surprised as Nick was that she’d decided to to become a profiler after training with Jack; but McGee had been rather shocked that they’d let her do her exam her way, gummy bears, tape recorder and all. 

“Yeah, man- she worked really hard for this. This is pretty much a miracle.”, said Nick. 

“We’re not miracle workers, Torres. We just don’t leave our man behind.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know it's supposed to be Ellick but I just can't resist using the team as family dynamic in literally every fic I write oops- But I mean, the big draw of NCIS is that they're a family so let's just call it for realism's sake lol
> 
> Also the end was a bit rushed, but this was just getting too long, sorry.


End file.
